


Existential Musings On A Hot Night In Night Vale

by Jade_Waters



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Existential Angst, Gen, Insomnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-05-08
Packaged: 2018-03-29 15:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3901129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Waters/pseuds/Jade_Waters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's too hot for Carlos to even pretend to sleep. Instead, he does what Scientists do: he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Existential Musings On A Hot Night In Night Vale

**Author's Note:**

> I'm pretty new to Night Vale, so hopefully this little fic doesn't upset the Sheriff's Secret Police. 
> 
> Set early in the series, definitely before "First Date." If you believe in linear time, anyway.

It is hot.

Of course it’s hot. This is Night Vale: it’s always hot. It doesn’t matter that it’s 3am and has been dark (partly stars, mostly Void) for hours. It’s still hot.

Carlos has lived in the desert his entire life, but that did nothing to prepare him for this place. He doesn’t think anything could have, really. The weather in Night Vale doesn’t follow any known scientific patterns. It defies logic, like everything else in this town. It doesn’t even get cold when the sun fails to rise. 

_When the sun fails to rise._ Carlos snickers at himself, manages to stay just to the right of hysterics. No, it’s hot then, too. But it wasn’t hot on that one bright day last July - on that day it was so, so cold and no one knew why. Carlos had measured the sun’s light and found nothing particularly unusual about it. The wind wasn’t special. No fronts had passed through. No strange beings from other dimensions had appeared. Not even the City Council had had anything to say about it. It was just... Cold. And then the sun had set and the moon had risen and it was as hot as mid-afternoon in Death Valley. No regard whatsoever for the Laws of Thermodynamics.

And there is, apparently, no acclimating. 

At first, Carlos had shaved his beard, tried lighter clothes, tried to stay in the shade. Nothing he did made any difference. He was always too hot. And then he’d cut his hair and, well. The whole town knew how that had gone. After that, Carlos gave up. 

He has taken to sleeping at strange times. Siestas after noon, working after midnight. He never used to, before. 

Before Night Vale. But time has so little meaning here. What difference does it make when he sleeps? 

What difference does it make when the sun rises? If it rises.

Carlos worries a little about himself. He’s not so sure, anymore, what’s real or what should be real or if it even matters. _I think, therefore I am, I think therefore I AM,_ Carlos chants to himself. He ignores the insistent whisper in the back of his mind, _I think, therefore I soon won’t be._

Forget. That’s what the people of this town would say. Think of other things. It’s the only way to function, really. Stop trying to understand that which is unknowable. Now it’s 3am and he is lying in bed trying but failing to sleep. He thinks of getting up and working, but it’s so hot. And science... He’d been so certain (before) that the unknowable could be made known through observation and testing and rigorous methodology. He’d been so sure...

Carlos thinks of Cecil. Cecil who calls him beautiful and perfect on the radio all the time but is so shy when they meet in person. Cecil who wears long sleeves and doesn’t drip sweat constantly and who says it’s hot on the radio but never seems to actually suffer the reality of that statement. Cecil who seems like a perfectly ordinary human, until you try to take a closer look. Even in Carlos’s mind, it’s like his gaze slides off, like there’s something flickering in his peripheral vision, like they are face to face with the howling Void between them. 

Cecil’s not like the Man in the Tan Jacket, whom no one can really remember after they’ve met him, except that he carries a deerskin briefcase. No, Carlos can remember Cecil. Remember his name and his voice - who could forget that voice? - and his clothes and those tattoos on the backs of his hands. He thinks of Cecil’s face. He thinks it’s very attractive, but... He can’t scientifically, objectively state any characteristics. They fall away from his thoughts like grains of sand through loose fingers and he feels not the panic of falling but the curling horror of standing too close to the cliff’s edge. He cannot describe Cecil’s face. 

He laughs again. Not hysterically. Just... Laughs. This place...

It’s hot. 

Carlos turns on the bedside radio and lets the weather’s nonsensical melodies help him to forget.


End file.
